


His Teeth Seem for Laughing Round an Apple

by toujours_nigel



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-04
Updated: 2012-06-04
Packaged: 2017-11-06 20:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/422939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andrew gets the post-novel death MR hints at.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Teeth Seem for Laughing Round an Apple

Come and go and fall slowly—so slowly, the bullet ripping through and the blood trickling out—to the ground, the shrapnel in my hands, the bullet in my heart and feel life going, seeping out, vanishing. Get up, and put hands back on the stretcher, all hands to work and every man needed and it’s my body on the stretcher and my face so wan so white so bloody and Dave, Dave weeping and struggling not to, and Dave isn’t fighting, cannot be here, isn’t here, and I can still, oh still see the body going, my Friends putting me away and setting back to work, and Dave in his cold quiet house weeping in memory and in prayer, and not for me, doesn’t know yet, none of them do, none of them know that I am dead, here in a field so far from home, so like my father’s death, and he was a better man than I and I am dead and I wanted to die, stepped into death all knowing, all uncaring, and I wanted to die because death was nobler than sinking into sin.

And it would have been sin, to love him, and I stayed away, and I stayed alive, and it was no sin to love him, only to love him so, and to be friends was easy, and to see him once now, and to see him again, and he looks happy, he looks quiet, and not with me, but not forgetting me, and he remembers me, and reads my letters, and reads them again, and keeps them locked away, and thinks of me, even with _him_ , and thinks of me, fleetingly, when he puts the cups away, of the way we used to drink tea, and thinks of me again when _he_ is gone, and talks to me as though I am there, as though he can see me, and this is true friendship, love of the soul, and oh it is easy, it is sweet to stay by him and to speak to him, and to help him in his tasks, so far from the blood and bullets of war.

And it easy to stay, and stay, and he is happy, with me, happier than with him, I cause him no moments of lingering hesitation, and we walk in the sunlight together, and it passes and warms me through, and we sit under the trees and we talk of things I knew little of then, and know better now, and it is joyous, and we return and there _he_ is, and the letter in his hand and the sharp bite of reality to take me back to the body rotting, and away from him.


End file.
